Aladura churches (Nigeria)

   The Aladura churches constitute a movement of Pentecostal-like African Initiated Churches (AiCs) in West Africa.

   Largely in reaction to the paternalism of European missions in West Africa, in the decades after World War i a new group of AiCs arose that became known as the Aladura or "prayer" people.

   They drew on Pentecostal themes but remained independent of parallel efforts by Pentecostalists. The largest group of Aladura churches is in the area dominated by the Yoruba people. The major bodies are the Christ Apostolic Church, the Church of the Lord (Aladura), the Eternal Sacred order of the Cherubim and Seraphim, and the Celestial Church of Christ. In the 1950s, the movement spread to Ghana, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, primarily by traveling Nigerian preachers such as the Apostles oduwole and Adejobi of the Church of the Lord (Aladura). In Ghana, new independent Aladura churches arose. As early as 1964, Nigerian immigrants brought Aladura churches to Great Britain; they later spread to other countries in Europe.

   Rejected by the Christian Council of Nigeria, the Aladura churches formed the Nigerian Association of Aladura Churches, which began in 1964 with 95 denominations representing some 1.2 million members. The association has grown steadily, accepting other AiCs and individual autonomous congregations. The Church of the Lord, Aladura was finally accepted into the World Council of Churches, which has in recent years made a concerted effort to respond to the AiCs.

   Further reading:

   ■ Allan H. Anderson, African Reformation: African Initiated Christianity in the Twentieth Century (Lawrenceville, N.J.: Africa World Press, 2000)

   ■ J. D. Y. Peel, Aladura: a Religious Movement among the Yoruba (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968)

   ■ Harold W. Turner, History of an African Independent Church (1) The Church of the Lord (Aladura) (oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967).